Military Seeks Flying Aircraft Carriers to Launch Drones

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The U.S. military wants to develop flying aircraft carriers to
transport drones in and out of surveillance zones.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking
ideas from companies on how to launch drones from huge transport
planes, such as the massive C-130 planes that ferry troops and
cargo to and from the battlefield..

Drones are cheaper and less risky to fly than manned aircraft,
but their range and speed limitations prevent them from being
used for some missions. Deploying them from an aircraft midflight
would address some of these problems, DARPA said, and could
improve surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering
missions. [ 7
Technologies That Transformed Warfare ]

"We want to find ways to make smaller aircraft more effective,
and one promising idea is enabling existing large aircraft, with
minimal modification, to become ' aircraft
carriers in the sky,'" Dan Patt, DARPA program manager,
said
in a statement.

"We envision innovative launch and recovery concepts for new
[drone] designs that would couple with recent advances in small
payload design and collaborative technologies."

DARPA's proposal calls for a system that would allow military
officials to reuse the launch platform multiple times, and could
be used to retrieve the drones after they are deployed. To lower
costs and minimize risk, DARPA envisions modifying existing
transport planes to carry drones.

There are multiple payoffs, DARPA officials say, including safer
missions for people, reducing the cost of deployments (since
drones would be used instead of pilots) and technological
advances.

"DARPA hopes to leverage significant investments in the area of
precision relative navigation, which seeks to enable extremely
coordinated flight activities among aircraft, as well as recent
and ongoing development of small payloads (100 pounds or less),"
agency officials said.

Companies submitted proposals last month, and DARPA said
flight-ready prototypes could be ready in four years.